All That's Needed
by Elise May
Summary: She wishes she meant less. She wishes he meant less.
_I'm not really sure what this is. In light of new spoilers, I felt the need to write something and since I'll be too busy to do anything at the time of airing, I decided to write it now. Enjoy!_

* * *

 **All That's Needed**

* * *

His shirt. It's the first thing she stumbles across as she enters the bedroom, steadier now on her feet than she had been half an hour previously. His words sobered her up; the look in his eyes even before. The second she barged through the door, almost literally, she'd known. Something wasn't right. There was a shift in the air, in his tone, his stance, in him.

The door to the bedroom that once was theirs is slammed shut behind her and the shirt stares at her in all its pink and unbuttoned glory. It's one of her favourites and, for that reason, is one of his, too. How will he go without it? Without all of this? There's his watch on the side, his special watch he wears only when they go out, when he deems the occasion worthy. His pyjamas at the foot of the unmade bed; chaos on the floor. Book after book on the shelf that her jewellery once claimed. Aftershave in the bathroom and protein shakes in the kitchen and he is everywhere and nowhere and she doesn't know what to think.

She rips the shirt from its hanger and holds it, holds it up to her face. Her coat is still on and it's red. Everything is red and it feels as if the very ground on which she walks is now new. Unsafe. Unstable.

The anger has long since passed. Confusion clouds her mind, but not her heart. It is not given the liberty, the chance to feel anything other than everything all at once. His eyes had been so haunted. He's lost, she knows he is, and he's hiding, if only she knew what from. Logic takes her to an afternoon she can't forget, but she knows Nick. God, for all he thinks she doesn't, for all he trusts her not to understand, she gets him. If he were privy to the knowledge of all she has done, destroyed, made wrong with her sense of right and her selfishness, her complete lack of care for all that is not him, he wouldn't be this calm. This collected.

 _I love you, Carla. Believe me, I do._

And she does. Of course she does. His love is perhaps the one thing she has never been able to doubt. It is unwavering, unrelenting at times; but it is always there. Even now.

She aches. Her feet ache and her heart aches and it doesn't take her long to strip, to throw herself into a cold bed, a lonely bed, a bed that always felt too big before he made it his own, and she is still holding onto his shirt. His damn shirt that isn't him. Nothing is him.

Suddenly, she feels sick. Suddenly, she realises. Remembers what it is to be two as one and then none at all and it scares her. It makes her want to sleep and not wake up, not for a good few months. The thought of drinking does cross her mind, but only briefly, and she wonders if that is his influence over her. He has influenced her life in so many ways. Her lifestyle is different, her outlook is different, who she is is and feels different.

A sob escapes her, muffled by the shirt. He's gone. Fuck knows where. His flat? It's sold, but he still has keys. He could be at his mum's, but he doubts David and Kylie would want their kids to wake up to Uncle Nicky on the sofa. Unless they're in on it. In on whatever this is because it's obviously something. It's everything, apparently.

Her own words have backfired on her.

 _All or nothing._

She can hear him now. Calling himself pathetic for relying on his family. He isn't. Even when she's said it in the past, she hasn't meant it. Not really. Because he's not pathetic. Previous to today, she was his family and she allowed him to rely on her, and vice versa, because that's just what people do.

Nick doesn't have many friends. The only friend she can think of is Robert and she hates it and she knows for a fact Nick would not have gone to him. He barely sees him nowadays.

There's a time when he would've come to her. They were friends once. If they were friends now, he'd have told her what this is. But she's more than that. More than anything and everything and everyone. Today, only today, she wishes she meant less. She wishes he meant less.

She sleeps, but only just. She misses his body, the heat on him, how she can reach for comfort in the night and it is there. He is there, always, and it means more to her upon reflection than she ever could have comprehended before. When she wakes, weekend dawns. Perhaps they could do with some time apart. She to think, to find an answer amidst all this confusion. He to come to his senses, to try again, to try harder.

She makes a drink in his favourite mug. She wears his shirt to bed until the day he is back in it again. Her ring is not removed. She waits. She is as patient with him as he has always been with her, and it works. They work and they find each other again. And circumstances are harder, the ease they once took for granted has been lifted until all that remains is them. Just them and all they feel and all they fear becomes just that little bit less significant.

Because her hand is in his. And sometimes, that's all that's needed.


End file.
